Two Hundred and Twenty-one Baker Streets

If you, like me, are lucky enough to find Two Hundred and Twenty-one Baker Streets in your local library, grab it and run to the issue desk. Edited by David Thomas Moore, it's an anthology of fourteen reimaginings of Holmes and Watson across time, space and gender, and it's almost entirely brilliant.

I came to Sherlock Holmes in the eighties via my dad and Jeremy Brett but I'm not precious about the characters so a 'based on' or a 'reworking of' is fine by me as long as it's done well. In this collection there are stories set in America, England, Australia, even a high fantasy universe (courtesy of Adrian Tchaikovsky). There's a female Watson with a male Holmes, and vice versa, there are pre-Victorian stories, present-day stories, one set in the future, even a couple of stories where the main characters are not called John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. And yet in each one the essence is there, some riff on the famous partnership, a recognisably Holmesian character who always puts facts before feelings. There is also, naturally, Mrs Hudson.

I only recognised one of the names on the author list and I'd never even read any of his work - I borrowed this book on the strength of its Sherlock Holmes connection. I'm glad I did, as I've now found a few new names to look out for. Two-thirds of the way through the book, as I finished another story and declared how much I loved it, OneMonkey pointed out that I'd said that after every one so far. Some work better than others in terms of mystery or solving a puzzle, but there's plenty in the collection for any Sherlock Holmes fan with a predilection for alternative history or SF.